Thanks for all the info guys. I called my resident tube guru here in town and he stocks JJ tubes. Unfortunately, he does not have the time to check the tubes, but it's still incredible that someone stocks tubes in Des Moines, IA of all places. I ended up swapping in and out to find a combo that resulted in the lowest noise. The JJ's weren't a good match as a pair, however, when I paired one of the JJ's with an Amperex (Holland) from the good channel I was totally blown away with how quiet it was. My next question is this: is this a good thing to do or not, mixing different brands of tube in the phono stage? I can say from a tube life standpoint that I know the Amperex will give out long before the brand new JJ, so I'll be going back to square one after a while.
Bad tube?
I just bought my first piece of tube audio equipment, an all original HH Scott 299. I'm a bit green when it comes to tubes so I'm asking for a bit of help. When I'm using the turntable I get this noise out of one channel that's almost like pink noise, but at a very very low level. It doesn't appear when I listen to the two line level inputs. Could it be a bad tube in the phono section? Or could it possibly be a result of the way the Regas ground their cable in the plug? It should probably not go without mention that since the Scott is original it has an original, un-grounded power cord.